Iranian Hanged After Verdict Stay
BBC - World News
Dec 6, 2007

An Iranian man has been hanged for rape despite his alleged victims withdrawing their accusations and a judicial review being ordered into the sentence. Makwan Mouloudzadeh, 20, had been found guilty of raping three teenage boys when he was 13 years old.

The hanging took place on Wednesday morning at a prison in Kermanshah province in western Iran.

Human rights groups say international law strictly forbids execution of child offenders, even after they become 18.

"On 11 November the head of the justice administration of Kermanshah received an order from the judiciary head, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, to stop the verdict being carried out," the lawyer, Saeed Eqbali, was quoted as saying.

"But the case, which was supposed to be reviewed in Tehran, was sent back from there to Kermanshah, and the execution was carried out quickly," the lawyer said.

Public execution

Clarisa Bencomo, of the US-based Human Rights Watch, told the Reuters news agency that she had received information that Mouloudzadeh's family had been to come and pick up his body.

Her organisation had spoken to people who had seen the body, she said.

As a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iran has undertaken not to execute child offenders.

Amnesty international says Iran has executed five minors so far in 2007 and 27 minors since 1990.

The latest execution brings to at least 280 the number of people hanged in Iran this year, according to the AFP news agency. Many are public hangings.

Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, serious drug trafficking, apostasy, adultery and homosexual acts between men.

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